Arkansas Home Repair Assistance: ADFA's HOME Program and 2025 Disaster Recovery Funding

Arkansas homeowners seeking help repairing or rehabilitating their primary residence have two primary state-administered funding streams, both routed through the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA): the federally funded HOME Investment Partnerships Program and, for 2025, a newly allocated Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) pool tied to recent tornadoes and flooding.

The HOME Investment Partnerships Program

The HOME Investment Partnerships Program is the largest federal block grant to state and local governments designed exclusively to create and preserve affordable housing for low-income households. ADFA, a public body politic and corporate created on May 1, 1985, receives HOME formula funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and makes sub-awards to eligible organizations — local governments, nonprofit developers, and Community Housing Development Organizations (CHDOs).

Within the HOME framework, ADFA operates a Homeowner Housing Program that specifically targets one of the most persistent affordable-housing needs in medium- and small-sized Arkansas communities: the rehabilitation of existing single-family, owner-occupied homes. HOME funds in this track can be used to help existing owner-occupants repair or rehabilitate their homes, and a companion HOME Single Family New Construction (SFNC) track supports new builds that promote homeownership.

Because HOME is a pass-through program, individual homeowners do not apply directly to ADFA. Assistance is delivered through local subrecipients — cities, counties, and nonprofits — that apply to ADFA when a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) is posted. ADFA maintains an ongoing notice-of-funding-availability page at adfa.arkansas.gov/notice-funding-availability/ where homeowners and partners can monitor current opportunities.

All HOME-funded rehabilitation work carries federal compliance strings, including Davis-Bacon labor standards where applicable, Section 3 employment and contracting preferences, radon testing and mitigation, environmental review, and Build America, Buy America Act domestic-content requirements on covered materials.

2025 CDBG-DR Allocation for Storm-Damaged Counties

On top of the ongoing HOME program, ADFA has begun standing up a separate repair-assistance pipeline for 2025 disaster survivors. Congress and HUD allocated $59,048,000 in CDBG-DR funds to Arkansas for Benton, Cross, and Pulaski counties following the severe storms, tornadoes, and flooding that triggered federal disaster declarations earlier in 2025. ADFA published its CDBG-DR 2025 Administrative Action Plan on April 10, 2025, and filed the accompanying SF-424 certifications on April 22, 2025, the required steps before HUD releases the funds for drawdown.

CDBG-DR funding is flexible by design and typically underwrites owner-occupied rehabilitation, reconstruction of destroyed homes, and related mitigation measures in low- and moderate-income households. The 2025 Arkansas allocation sits alongside an earlier $8,940,000 CDBG-DR award made in 2020 for Jefferson and Perry counties, reflecting the state’s now-recurring use of the program as a long-term recovery tool.

HOME-ARP Non-Congregate Shelter Funding

Separately, ADFA opened a HOME-ARP Notice of Funding Opportunity for Non-Congregate Shelter (NCS) projects, accepting applications from December 8, 2025 through March 9, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. While NCS funding is aimed at shelter acquisition, rehabilitation, and construction for qualifying populations rather than private homeowners, it is part of the same American Rescue Plan–era HOME funding family that supports housing preservation statewide.

What Homeowners Should Do

Arkansas homeowners who need repair help should start by identifying which track fits their situation. Low- and moderate-income owner-occupants anywhere in the state should contact their city or county housing office to ask whether it is a current HOME subrecipient. Homeowners in Benton, Cross, or Pulaski counties whose homes were damaged in the 2025 storms should watch for CDBG-DR intake once ADFA stands up subrecipient agreements under the April 2025 Action Plan. In both cases, ADFA’s funding-availability page is the authoritative source for open application windows.